5 IT Infrastructure Upgrades Projects for 2015

The right IT infrastructure upgrades projects for 2015 are essential to the ongoing, timely delivery of critical IT services, they’re strategic improvements to the technological foundation of a business.

About 47% of IT leaders report an increased hardware budget this year, according to TechTarget’s IT Priorities Survey. Of those surveyed, 48% say there’s more money for software, and 41% note added funding for cloud projects. A smaller percentage, 32%, sees an increased IT staff budget for 2015. The survey shows 42% of enterprise IT respondents in North America are planning some kind of data center infrastructure upgrade in 2015.

Migrate to Windows Server 2012 R2 Operating System

Windows Server updates rank high on the to-do list for 2015: 39% of IT leaders surveyed plan to deploy Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 now that the OS has had time to prove itself in production.

The justifications drivingMicrosoft Windows Server 2012 R2 OS upgrade project vary. Some worry about Microsoft’s ongoing support strategy, and see Windows Server 2012 R2 upgrades as a means of ensuring support over the long term. Others want a server-side platform that best supports Windows 8.1 (and eventually Windows 10) on endpoint systems.

Still more are motivated by the spate of new and improved features in Windows Server 2012 R2, including command-line and scripting updates in PowerShell, as well as Active Directory Administrative Center enhancements such as an AD Recycle Bin, granular password control and a PowerShell history viewer. Server Message Block has better performance, event messages, virtual machine (VM) file support and more. Windows Server 2012 R2 also caters to Remote Desktop Services with session shadowing, online data deduplication, improved RemoteApp operation and support for DirectX 11.1.

Windows Server 2012 R2 makes additional inroads into virtualization and the cloud, touting features like shared virtual hard disks, storage quality of service capabilities and automatic VM activation. Improvements to Hyper-V Replica allow VM replication as often as every 30 seconds, with more recovery points. Hyper-V Live Migration was streamlined to enhance performance with a greater variety of protocols. Better integration with cloud platform Microsoft Azure simplifies public cloud for Windows shops.

Data Center Consolidation

The push to consolidate data centers — optimizing resource use by packing more workloads onto fewer servers — is far from over: 33% of enterprise IT leaders plan IT infrastructure consolidation projects in 2015.

When IT teams tie consolidation projects into hardware refresh cycles, business leaders see the value of reducing physical infrastructure before paying for a new fleet. Ideally, using fewer, more reliable physical systems means a smaller overall capital outlay with fewer server maintenance contracts and lower recurring power and cooling expenses for the data center.

Consolidation initiatives can also accompany IT architecture optimization. For example, if an IT organization restructures related workloads onto the same physical server, these VMs can exchange data without releasing to the general network. Such internal data exchanges are much faster, and alleviate network traffic and congestion.

Expanding workload virtualization and mastering the art of consolidation also set an important foundation for cloud initiatives, another hot IT infrastructure project in 2015. These actions allow the business to shave hardware costs while maintaining a full suite of workloads.

Improve Virtualized Environments

IT leaders appear poised to update or adopt an ever-expanding range of service platforms.

Updating the server-side hypervisor is popular in 2015. A new hypervisor can mean more VMs on fewer servers with better workload performance, availability, mobility and protection, aiding consolidation.

A quarter of surveyed IT leaders plan to upgrade VMware vSphere to version 5.5 — though it might make sense to skip 5.5 and move directly to vSphere 6.0, released in February 2015. VMware vSphere 6.0 promises a wealth of new and improved features in vMotion, Storage DRS and SRM, vSphere Replication, vSphere Data Protection and others. Scalability reaches 64 hosts per cluster, 8,000 VMs per cluster, 480 CPUs per host, 12 TB of host memory, 2,048 VMs per host, 128 virtual CPUs per VM and 4 TB of memory per VM.

Virtualization is quickly extending into the network. Network virtualization, such as VMware NSX, allows IT to treat the physical Ethernet network as a pool of transport capacity allocated to VMs along with security and network services. A significant 9% of survey respondents plan to deploy VMware’s NSX platform in 2015, eliminating long, error-prone configuration headaches traditionally associated with physical network architectures.

Development, deployment and management of business applications has always been clunky and inefficient. The move to DevOps and the introduction of software containers from Docker and its ilk sparked a new look at application development in 2014. Containers allow IT teams to build, distribute and run applications quickly and on multiple platforms — server, laptop, cloud — leading 5% of survey respondents to deploy container deployment in 2015. Containerization is still in its infancy; by comparison, 32% of IT leaders report a mobile application initiative this year.

Move to the Cloud

Cloud technology builds on a foundation of virtualization for faster and easier workload deployment and management, often by end users without direct intervention from IT. Cloud enables utility computing, where IT is the service provider to the enterprise.

Private clouds bring self-service and automation to virtualized and consolidated data centers; 19% of survey respondents plan to build a private cloud in 2015. In addition, 22% of IT leaders intend to build a hybrid cloud to support many kinds of business workloads.

A business might initially test a new application on a private cloud, but eventually deploy the app from a public cloud provider; it mitigates IT capital costs by moving some routine tasks onto the cloud and frees in-house data center capacity for mission-critical workloads.

There are still management and security concerns with cloud, such as controlling resource use, monitoring workload performance and generating chargeback/showback usage data. It’s no surprise that 18% of survey respondents want to deploy hybrid cloud management, and 25% of those surveyed plan to use cloud security tools in 2015.

Work with Mobility

The corporate workforce is increasingly mobile, using laptops, tablets and smartphones to access business apps. Many of these endpoint devices are user-owned, pressuring businesses to support bring your own device (BYOD).

About 31% of IT leaders surveyed report mobility-related IT infrastructure projects for 2015. While 42% are planning for BYOD support, another 32% of respondents will not support BYOD, instead issuing corporate-owned mobile devices.

IT staff must change architectures to accommodate a broader base of mobile devices, while also securing sensitive business data.

Mobility is a multifaceted issue that requires a multipronged strategy for proper implementation. For example, 45% of respondents plan to deploy mobile device management; while 44% plan to use apps or application development platforms capable of supporting mobile endpoints. And 26% plan an identity and access management project in 2015.

Regardless of the project, support for mobility always comes down to worker comfort and productivity balanced against security.

Google Docs convert web addresses into Tiny URLs The spreadsheet component of Google Docs provides some useful functions for importing web data into your online documents. For instance, you can use the importFeeds function to manipulate RSS in Googl...

Stupeflix Photo Slideshows in Notepad Creating a video slideshow from photos is easy. Import your image collection into Photo Story (or Windows Movie Maker), choose a music track to play alongside the slideshow and render. Photo Story can...

Adobe Mobile Flash Plugin for iPhone It's been reported that a developer has submitted a Adobe Mobile Flash Plug-in for use on the iPhone. Fans hoping for the plug-in to stay though might be disappointed as it breaks all kinds of agreeme...

Bring Social Network Back by Movable Type Motion These days, many companies are devoting full time resources to monitoring and participating in social networks. As social sites grow in both size and quantity, it becomes increasingly difficult to kee...

Search Documents with DocJax While it is possible to find Office documents and PDF ebooks on the web using the filetype search operator of Google, this method has two drawbacks: 1. You need to download the document in order to...

Disclaimer

The articles on this web site are provided for informational purposes only. pupuweb.com does not accept any responsibility or liability for the use or misuse of the article content on this site or reliance by any person on the site’s contents.

About

Hi! I’m Alex. Thank you for reading the article above. I am a Certified MCITP: SA and EA, CEH, ECHA and ITIL with more than 10 years of experience working in information technology industrial as IT Solution Consultant based in Singapore. If you have any suggestions, tips or feedback, feel free to send me an email: editor@pupuweb.com